Death Among the Mangroves (8 page)

Chapter 12

Monday, December 23

At lunch time Troy decided to do some actual police work. He walked out the station's back door and across the town hall parking lot and over to 2nd Street in what passed for a business district for Mangrove Bayou. The Shrimp 'n Things was a restaurant with an old and rusty anchor on the sidewalk in front and old and dusty wooden traps, oars and oddments of floats and netting on the walls inside. In short, it looked like a dozen other restaurants in Mangrove Bayou.

A bartender was one of the two witnesses that Juan Valdez and Dominique Reiss had turned up. Troy found him polishing glasses in the restaurant's large bar and waiting area. In a tourist town every restaurant owner knew that the way to maximize profit was to cut down the restaurant area, double the size of the bar and make everyone wait for a table.

Troy sat at the bar. There was a menu and he ordered up a Reuben sandwich, something he often did first time in a new restaurant because it was hard to screw up a Reuben.

The bartender brought the sandwich and an ice tea and introduced himself as “Jay” and told Troy he had carded Barbara Gillispie and turned her down, but suspected that the man she was with had bought several happy-hour “two-fers” and given one to the girl each time.

“I don't like it,” Jay told Troy as he washed more glasses in a stainless steel sink. “But who a person hands a drink to is a little out of my control.”

Troy nodded his head and finished chewing. He took a sip of ice tea. “Legally, it's not out of your control and you know that.” The French fries were the thin and crispy kind and Troy reached for some of those.

“What can I do when they walk outside with the drinks?”

“They aren't supposed to walk outside.”

“Yeah. That's the law. How the hell am I supposed to enforce it while doing this job too and mixing drinks for twenty people? Does the state legislature think I stand at the door and count the spoons whenever someone leaves?”

“I don't know,” Troy said. He took a bite of the Reuben, chewed and swallowed. “I just enforce the laws, I don't try to rationalize them. But I'm after more important crimes than a little slipping of alcohol to a minor. Tell me all you know.”

“Don't want to get in trouble.”

“You
are
in trouble. What we're doing now is getting you out of it. I like these French fries. Talk to me.”

Jay put the last of the glasses on a drying mat and looked around. There were a dozen people in the bar and more in the restaurant space. Several young women in scanty shorts and sawed-off tee shirts were waiting on customers. Jay leaned toward Troy and lowered his voice. “His name is Mark Stider. Dad's a judge of some kind, I hear him telling everyone. He likes to hang out here and over at the beach this time of year.” Jay aimed his chin to indicate the beach just two blocks away. He needn't have; Troy already knew where the beach was.

“He got any favorite girl? Any regular?”

“Not that I see,” Jay said. “Different one each night. Sometimes several different ones each night. Makes me feel old, I tell you.”

“Does he seem to favor any particular look? Maybe blondes or redheads, or skinny ones or fat ones?”

“He favors them young and wearing bra and panties. Beyond that I don't think he cares.” Jay shook his head.

“
All women look the same in the dark
,”
Troy quoted.

“I suppose. But Ben Franklin was tearing up Paris. Mark Stider is tearing up Mangrove Bayou.” Jay made a daiquiri for a waitress and she took it away on a tray while Troy checked for possible clothing violations.

“Pity that poor girl can't afford shorts and a shirt the right size,” Troy said.

Jay grinned. “Better tips.” He picked up another glass to polish. “Local guys have easy pickings with the college girls who come down here for visits. The girls want a little adventure, some story to tell back at school. Mark Stider is happy to provide that.”

“Sort of a tour guide, day and night.”

“Christ,” Jay said. “Young men living here, college break is like shooting fish in a barrel. I'm from Cleveland. Only seasons we got are filthy-snow winters and smelly-river summers. Wish I'd grown up here.”

“Cleveland's the only place I ever heard of,” Troy said, “where the river was so polluted it caught fire.” He ate the last French fry and pushed the empty plate away. Lee Bell would have been horrified.

Jay grinned. “You got that right. That was before I was born. But we'll never live it down.”

The other witness was a maid at the Gulf View Motel named Helen who had been almost run over by Mark Stider as he sped up Alaska Avenue from Beach Street, and around the corner of the motel. Troy tracked Helen down in the motel's laundry room where she was folding sets of sheets and towels. He helped her with the sheets while she talked. Helen remembered Mark Stider, his car—a Porsche—and Barbara Gillispie in the passenger seat. She also remembered seeing Barbara Gillispie getting ice from a machine on the first floor of the motel and at the other end from her room with Jodi and Brett.

“Would that be the closest ice machine to Room 221?” Troy asked.

“Oh, no sir,” Helen said. “We have four ice machines, one at each end, both floors.”

“Any of the ice machines broken or unplugged or anything like that?”

“No sir. They all working just fine.”

Troy checked anyway and the one nearest to Room 221 was full of ice and humming away at making still more. They all were; he checked each one.

Loren Fitch was in his office in the rear of the motel lobby. Troy walked in and sat in a visitor chair.

“Got a huge favor to ask of you,” he said. “First, how long has Mark Stider got his room rented for?”

Fitch's eyebrows went up. “What makes you think Mark Stider has a room rented here?” he combed his fingers through his thick white hair.

“Don't screw with me, Loren. I'm not in the mood.” In fact, Troy was just guessing, but Barbara Gillipsie's use of an ice machine not closest to her own room was a clue. The fact that Fitch appeared to recognize Stider's name was another.

Fitch looked at his computer. “Room 101. Rented through the end of the year, December 31.”

“He sign the register?”

“I assume so.”

“Well, you know what they say about assuming,” Troy said.

“No, I don't. What?”

“Never mind. Let's go look at the register.”

Out in the lobby Fitch got the register from behind the front desk. Mark Stider had, indeed, signed it. “Would you say he was just using it for sex with anyone he met on the beach?” Troy asked. “The kid lives here in town, after all.”

“How would I know?” Fitch said. “These kids. They screw in the water, on the beach, in my rooms, up the palm trees for all I know. I just collect the money and keep changing the sheets. Kid must be rich, though. I mean, these rooms aren't cheap, in-season. Like you say, he lives in town here anyway.”

“Right. Here's what I want. First, don't let the maid service clean Mark Stider's room. Don't let any of your staff in there at all. Second, if he should check out early, do not enter the room or rent it out. Call me if that happens.”

“Why am I doing all this?”

“I'm going to get a search warrant for that room. And I don't want any evidence in there disturbed.”

“Search warrant for what?”

“That's my business. Just do as I say.”

“Hell, if you want in there, I can let you in. Got the master key.”

“Nope. This needs to be done right. Under the law you do not have the authority to let me into the room. Mark Stider does, but I don't plan to ask him. And keep this conversation strictly between thee and me.”

Troy left the motel, walked north on Beach Street and around the Sandy Shoes restaurant. The beach was popular today, the water not so much. He passed the public boat ramp beside Sunset Bay, dodging a Ford F-350 truck and a twenty-five-foot Boston Whaler on a three-axle trailer that a large woman with a straw hat was backing down the ramp. In the distance, turning a corner slowly, he saw one of the department patrol trucks with Jeremiah Brown at the wheel. The town hall parking lot had a low brick wall with an entrance for vehicles. Troy hopped the wall at the corner where they kept the trash Dumpster and let himself into the back of the police station.

On his computer, Troy dug through old records, both local and for Collier County. There were no records for Mark Stider in Mangrove Bayou. Collier County had him for some speeding tickets and three investigations for suspected assault. All those had been dropped. He wished it were possible for him to see what firearms the Stider clan had bought, but Florida law specifically forbade the keeping of any records of those.

Florida had the highest rate of concealed-weapon licensing in the nation, with about one in ten adult citizens having the license to carry. And those were just the law-abiding ones. No record of any Mark Stider, but Judge Hans Stider had a license to carry a concealed firearm. This was not unusual. Many judges “carried” all the time. They were even permitted to take the guns into the courthouses with them.

The family that carries together, stays together
, Troy thought.

Chapter 13

Monday, December 23

The Stiders lived in a large house facing south and over Alabama Avenue and the salt marsh beyond. What information Troy had gathered thus far didn't make Mark Stider a serious suspect, but it was all that Troy had at the moment, and Troy thought he may as well poke at it. Troy took Angel Watson along and paid the Stider manse a visit. Like all new construction in a flood plain—and all of Mangrove Bayou was a flood plain—the house was raised eleven feet off of grade, this one on steel columns, to meet the FEMA code.

Underneath, there was a Porsche and room for another car. A central utilities core contained water and electric lines and there was a small elevator for hoisting up the day's groceries or one lazy person. A twenty-one-foot fishing boat on a trailer was parked to one side of the house and covered with a blue boat cover. Troy bent and cupped his hands around his eyes to look into the Porsche interior, but it had window tinting except for the front and he couldn't see much and the doors were locked. They climbed some stairs to a porch and rang the doorbell.

Martha Stider was a small woman who fluttered. She wore a long-sleeve blue silk caftan that came down to her feet. She let them in and seated them in the living room in overstuffed chairs facing a glass-topped low table that Lee Bell could have landed her Cessna on. Shaking her hands like people do in public toilets with hot-air blowers, Martha Stider explained that her husband, “The Judge,” was at work in Naples. Troy explained that he only wished to ask her son a few questions.

Martha fluttered off to get some coffee. Troy wondered how she would carry it back when she waved her hands so much. He also wondered how she had come by a black eye. Martha did manage the tray, with two coffees and sugar and cream. Angel took a cup and added cream and sugar. Troy drank his black. Martha didn't seem to want any and she sat on a matching small sofa across from them. She solved the fluttering by holding one hand with the other in her lap.

“Martha, how did you get the shiner?” Angel asked.

Martha Stider's hand went to her left eye for a second. She looked down at the table and mumbled something.

“I didn't catch that,” Angel said.

“I said I fell down. In the bathroom.”

“Ah.” Angel glanced at Troy. “Bathrooms can be dangerous.”

“I'm just curious,” Troy said. “But I noticed there's only one car downstairs. I was told the Porsche is Mark's.” Actually, Troy had run vehicle checks on all the Stiders and, of course, the motel maid had seen him driving it.

Martha nodded, almost eagerly, it seemed to Troy, to be changing the subject. “That's Mark's. Isn't it beautiful? The Judge got it for Mark to take to law school. He said that Mark needed a ‘manly' car for a manly profession.”

“Ah,” Troy said. He pondered the notion that several thousand pounds of metal could make you “manly” if it was only bent into the right shape. He valued his Forester for the roof rack that carried his canoe, the trailer hitch for the sailboat trailer, and the all-wheel drive for pulling the boat up a slippery boat ramp, and its cheap price. Maybe the roof rack was “manly.” Lee Bell called his Forester a nunmobile.

“What does the judge drive?” he asked Martha, just to keep the conversation going.

“A Mercedes. One of those big round ones.”

“An SUV?”

“That's it. Yes.”

“You do not appear to have a car of your own, Martha. When Mark is up at law school and the judge is at work in Naples, what do you use?”

“Oh. Well, I don't really need a car. It's a small town and I can walk around. We usually do the grocery shopping on Saturdays, The Judge and I. He drives and pays, and I get to pick out the food.”

“He pays for the groceries?” Troy asked.

“Yes. Of course.”

“But he lets you pick out the food.”

“Well, that's my job, The Judge says I'm the helpmeet, the homemaker.”

“Is that what Judge Stider tells you?”

“Well, yes. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Martha, would you do me a big favor? Hand your purse over to Angel here.”

“Do I have to?”

“No, of course not. But humor me, as one friend to another.”